head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs brightdata-mcp
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars, 2,615 forks, 227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. brightdata-mcp has 2,654 stars, 329 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,090% (31,578 vs 2,654 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; brightdata-mcp is written in JavaScript under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, brightdata-mcp 12%. CloakBrowser was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, browser-automation), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| CloakBrowser | brightdata-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 329 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick brightdata-mcp if
- You want the brightdata-mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brightdata-mcp fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
CloakBrowser is a stealth Chromium build for Python and JavaScript teams that need browser automation to survive bot detection systems, aimed at scraping and AI agent engineers who want to replace Playwright or Puppeteer without rewriting their code.
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About brightdata-mcp
brightdata mcp is a Model Context Protocol server in JavaScript under the MIT license. It exposes web search, page scraping, structured data extraction, browser automation, LLM response collection, and package registry data to AI agents, coding agents, chat assistants, and other MCP compatible clients. It lives in the MCP ecosystem.
read the full brightdata-mcp overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or brightdata-mcp more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars and brightdata-mcp has 2,654. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and brightdata-mcp free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and brightdata-mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and brightdata-mcp?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and brightdata-mcp in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, CloakBrowser or brightdata-mcp?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,578 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose brightdata-mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.